


Everything Is Something to Somebody

by Dreamsoda



Series: Car Ride to Hell [2]
Category: Homestuck, Original Work, i am my own fandom - Fandom
Genre: Not as homesuck as you'd expect :), OCs - Freeform, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 09:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12362946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreamsoda/pseuds/Dreamsoda
Summary: “Is that a no then.” She verberated hard and dry, her voice hollowed of its previous intensity. Asking one last time if you could let her have it guilt-free, if you could let her have her bullrun to nowhere.“Yeah,” you said back, standing your ground. She was running away and leaving everyone, including you, to rot, “It’s a no.”





	Everything Is Something to Somebody

“Is that a no then.” She verberated hard and dry, her voice hollowed of its previous intensity. Asking one last time if you could let her have it guilt-free, if you could let her have her bullrun to nowhere.  
“Yeah,” you said back, standing your ground. She was running away and leaving everyone, including you, to rot, “It’s a no.”

Then the car shut up. She stabbed at the radio with one hand and when static came on she left it there, a screeching snow filling up the empty air that you’d burned dry. She returned her hands to the steering wheel and just left it going, just let the snow file in-between them, burying you, and threatening to freeze you both to death.

You knew she’d sit like that forever. It was a challenge. You didn’t think there was a person alive that would stubbornly hold onto something stupid and brain melting as long as she would. She could stare death in the face and he’d look away first. You weren’t as confident as death, you’d bend at the slightest annoyance, and you did, adjusting the radio for her.

Her fingers started tapping on the steering wheel and it annoyed you. The miles wore on and on and Madison was came and gone and she was still tapping her fingers and when you were out in the middle of nowhere going nearly 80 down I-90 you realized, in all consciousness, that she had given up on you. She wasn’t going to try to apologize for running out on you again, she was done, she had “tried” and given up, she hadn’t listen to you. The ship of understanding had sailed and she’d silently boot kicked you off it.

You felt a sense of hard loneliness you’d never felt before. You realized that when you dropped her off in St. Paul that you would be alone. You’d drive back to Chicago, alone, and she’d never look back at you if you didn’t do something about it. You never wanted to drive back to face a monster all by yourself, you wanted her to stay.

And…you knew…you knew she both didn’t care about you and didn’t understand what she was sending you back to.

“Cecil,” you broke the silence, broke in the face of her stare, “It’s not going to be just fine without you gone, you realize?”

“I do.” She sounded hollow.

“He takes butter knives to mom’s paintings and destroys them. He punts me down stairs, what about that?”

She nodded.

“And you don’t care?” You asked, frustrated, “What do you expect us to do with you gone??”

She was determinedly silent, like she’d gone back to her threat and for a minute you regretted bringing it up again only to make her hate you more. For another minute she didn’t say anything, just watched the road with a hardlined grimace before saying something you knew she didn’t want to admit was true,  
“Alex, I’m almost eighteen,” she started only to leave a massive gap of silence, like that was her full answer. It was punctuated by hard breaths, keeping her crybaby tears in check until, minutes and years later, she spoke up again, “I…you know l-laws and shit…he knows laws and shit…and he got me into that school in New Jersey and I know why, you know why, he knows why…I-I just can’t, Alex…I can’t. I don’t have the luxury to care about anyone but myself anymore. You know what I expect you to do with me gone? I expect mom to fucking grow up and do her job.”

It went quiet again and you leaned back in your chair and the car just kept going and going and going, not looking back at the hell left behind. Not looking back at you. You kind of wished that none of this was happening, not just this car ride to hell, but all of it. The hell that would be when you got back home, the looming fear that you were suddenly going to be all on your own, just all of it, you wished you were in bed in some other world. The world where your mom married a guy and settled down in China and, somehow, you were the firstborn. In that universe Cecil has the sweet pleasure of not existing at all.

“Hey,” you broke the silence again after what felt like forever, “..Do you remember the day we came home from school and mom had donated all your stuffed animals?”

The two of you shared a look before she returned to the road. The brief emotion on her face seemed confused that you’d even brought it up. She took a deep breath, “I…what?”

“The day you punched me in the chest when I came to get you out of bed and she told that if you were going to be a brat there’d be consequences?”

“Yeah? I remember.”

“Why were you sleeping in your toy chest? Why didn’t you want to get up?” You glanced at her and expression which had turned to stone, “Why didn’t you sleep in your bed?”

You had a reason to bring up something so rough, make her think about all those things she didn’t wouldn’t admit were real in so many words.

“My bed was covered in blood I woke up with a nosebleed or some sh—”

“I was in the bathroom,” you spoke up before she could finish, “I’d gotten up in the middle of the night,” you continued of your night in the jack-and-jill bathroom you’d shared with her all your lives, watching her all the while, “And I saw that your door was open and I heard you talking to him. I hid in the door and watched.”

“How much did you see."

“I saw enough,” you said solidly, “I saw him slap you—and everything else.”

She nodded her head sullenly, “Yeah…yeah, yeah…I—well, yeah, you know me, yeah,” she started speaking rapidly, too fast for you to get a word in, “I guess he hit me just the right way, just, spluttered blood everywhere like a fucking geyser—squirt, squirt. Did you notice they also got rid of all my sheets? Got blood errywhere, got rid of the comforter, the pillows, the sheets, everything. I actually really liked those particular sheets too, they had the frogs on them. They just threw them away, Dad said they were dirty. Like, what the fuck does that mean?? And—and—and they were like in cahoots, Alex, cahoots,” you saw her glance at you so she could gauge your reaction. Cahoots, Alex. Cahoots. She started talking again before you even had a chance, “They, like, conspired to ruin everything I loved in one goddamn day! You—you—you know—you know that octopus toy I made by hand? Yeah—yeah! She donated it. I fucking birthed that thing outta my mind vagina and she fucking gave it away!! All my toys!! I hit you one time and she—she threw everything in a trash bag and then had the goddamn fucking gall to tell me!! Me! to act mature about it.”

You listened quietly, watching as she switched lanes, like talking about this was suddenly second nature, like it never mattered at all. You looked over and you saw she was pulling off the high way to stop at a gas station.

“The fucking…frogs…I loved them more than life itself and he…he…You gotta piss Alex? Cuz I think I gotta piss, fill up the car for me, okay?” She reached in blindly to the center compartment, pulling out a single hundred and threw it at you, driving with one hand and pulling into a pump a little haphazardly, “I’ll be right back, don’t flash that around—be right back.”

She tossed the keys into your lap, got up, and disappeared into the night. You scooted over to the driver’s seat and started the car again, watching the tank gauge fill up well over halfway. You decided not to embarrass your sister by dwelling on the sudden, unneeded stop. You knew she didn’t need to go, she hadn’t drank anything since you left Chicago at 1 AM. You were a little peeved that, once again, she’d talked over you and your point. It reiterated your rooted anger that she was doing this to spite you.

You begrudgingly topped off the car, which ended up being less than ten dollars and decided to loiter around the gas station being bitter and annoyed, waiting for her to get out of the bathroom. You didn’t want to look the cashier in the eye and ask him to break a hundred, you started padding your bill with shit like ice cream and stupid gas station souvenirs.

You quickly became paranoid of the cashier and his watchful, judging eye, and paid for your crap, electing to loiter outside out of his sight. You went to the car and waited and waited and waited (and waited). Every five minutes you’d poke the time button it’d flash another 5 minutes of your time, gone forever. You glanced at the building again, had she really sat her prissy ass on a gas station toilet for over thirty minutes and shat a brick? What was she doing?

Just as your mind was cycling through every bad thing that could have happened in a random ass Wisconsin gas station bathroom to a princess at 3 AM you looked up and she was getting in the car like she hadn’t been gone for nearing fourty-five goddamn minutes. She asked for the keys, you gave them to her, and, without another word, she stared up and drove away.

She immediately drove away like everything was perfectly fine.

“I got you ice cream,” you offered like an olive branch you thought she didn’t deserve.

She looked at it, then back at the road, “Thanks, yeah, thanks. There’s a rest stop, like, a few miles up I just wanna stop there, okay? I didn’t want to stay back there.”

“Okay.” You tried to let it go because you realized, somewhat, that whatever was happening was actually definitely your fault. Whatever roundabout rationale you had for purposefully bringing up nightmares was lost to time. Not that you were going to apologize for bringing it up. Your dad had smacked the shit out of you that night when he’d pushed through you to get to the bathroom to get a tampon to shove up her nose after he smacked her brains out. You refused to let go of your statement that she didn’t care about how it affected you just as much (if not more, let’s be real) as it affected her.

Within a few minutes she was pulling off the highway and into a nearly abandoned parking lot of a freakishly liminal rest stop.

Practically before the car was parked she’d snapped the ice cream out of your hands, shoveling some into her mouth and opening the door to lean out of it.

“Cecil, shut the goddamn door, you’re going to get murdered.”

“I’m fine,” she hovelled between gobbles. She was inhaling it faster than you’d seen her anorexic ass eat anything in her life. You watched her back, hunched over with just the barest light shining on her from some other world.

You watched her scarf her ice cream down for a few minutes in silence before breaking down and asking the obvious, “Cecil, are you okay??”

“I WAS—I was twelve, Alex! Twelve! No! I’m not fucking oKAY!!! You—I was gonna fucking grow up on my own without her forcing me!! I would have just—just fucking thrown them away if-if-if she’d just—just given me time to grow up!! I was twelve and she threw them away like fucking trash. Everything I owned in the goddamn world and she—” she took a big mouthful of ice cream and stabbed the spoon into the cup “—I loved that octopus—I loved it and—and I BET she gave it to some fucking ghetto ass goodwill where someone probably bought it for their stupid fucking dog, and that fucking stupid fucking German fucking Shepherd fucking piece of shit probably murdered it and then the parents THREW IT AWAY, and then the garbage man set it on fire and it’s gone! It’s fucking gone, Alex. All of them! Every last one is lost and I’ll never, ever, EVER get them back!! EVER!!”

She stopped talking and started shoveling sugar into her mouth again with a rapid fire succession that only stopped when she bit down on the spoon and grabbed her head. Instead of letting the pain pass she screamed and violently threw the ice cream on the ground, stomping on it with her foot.

“IF—if-if-if she had just—just let me…GROW UP—I-I would have set one foot into seventh grade and told myself I was too cool and too mature for toys buT nO—if she had just put in the time—put in the time I would have done it at my own pace!! But you know what she did, Alex?? She made the decision for me—now—now all I want in the entire fucking world is my fucking octopus!! I just want my toys, Alex! I want my stuffed animals and my dolls and my dresses! I just want my fucking childhood back—and-and I’ll literally never get it back, ever and I…I don’t know what to do, Alex, and I don’t want to go back home and be a grown up and be an adult so just…shut up…shut up…I’m sorry, you like that?? I’m sorryyy I can’t do it anymore—I’m fucking sorry that life’s going to be hard for you and I wish I could fix it but I…I just want…Alex—it’s mine—it’s my life…you can’t have it because it’d make your life easier…so just…sh-shut up…shut up…I don’t fucking…want to hear it….anymore…”  
She collapsed onto her knees and you heard her sobbing, sniveling, and crying while you just sat in your seat and watched.

Why was she so hung up on the toys?? She could buy a billion stuffed toys if she stayed home—fuck, she could even keep stealing them from your little sisters, “Are you really telling me that your stupid stuffed animals from six years ago are more important than ME?”

“ALeX!!” She whipped her head up and back at you, “It’s—it’s not about the that anymore!”

“Then what’s it about?? Because why even talk about your toys then?? Mom was right about you, you never, ever, EVER think about anyone else but yourself. can’t you see how this is going to affect me?? You want to live? I want to live!!”

She coughed out a sob and stabbed her finger at him emotionally, “It’s not about you!” Her voice cracked with another sob, “You’re fifteen! I gave you six years Alex!! Six years of my life that I gave you with my entire body and soul! Please, I’m begging you, please let me have this, I—I need you to give this to me, Alex, I need it.”

“Well…I need…it…too…” You said pathetically, looking down at your lap and away from her. Suddenly feeling self-conscious and awkward with yourself, “It’s not fair, Cecil, you get to run off and you’re taking you with you. I’m not like you! You’re really strong and brave and I’m not any of that. He’ll run over me and kill me without you there, don’t you care? Don’t you care about what you’re going to put me through—??”

She grabbed your hand, interrupting you, “Alex, let me have this—” You started fighting with her, jerking your arm, “—stop, let me have this.”

“Th—fine,” you ceded your struggling hand, limply.

“Alex, I’m doing this with or without you.”

“There’s no—”

“No! Alex, listen, I’m going to say this once and I want you to know it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say: I’m doing this with or without you. You can come with me to Minneapolis, or, you can get out.”

“What??”

She held tight to your hand’s jerks for escape, “You can come with me or you can get out, you can ride with me and say goodbye to me in a few hours and drive yourself home, or, we’ll drive over to the other rest stop and I’ll hand you over to a trucker. I’m giving you this choice, Alex. I want you to come with me, but I don’t know what to do with you, you’re being a baby. I think a long night with a truck driver and a walk home from downtown Chicago will help you grow up.”

You stared at her, dumbfounded.

“I’m giving you the option: drive yourself back or get out. Which do you pick.”

“I—I’m calling your bluff.”

She let go of your hand and started the car, but you looked away first.


End file.
